


Home is where you are

by fardareismai



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Tumblr Prompt, exes meeting again after years apart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 20:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18902353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: Tumblr prompt: Nine/Rose, exes meeting again after years apart





	Home is where you are

Chris glared at his Facebook page. He’d never gotten a hold on how to use the program, and he seemed to have cocked it up once again.  What he’d though had been a private message to Jack

_Back in London for a few weeks.  Drinks?_

Had ended up being posted publicly, and he had no idea how.

However it had happened, he was now inundated with invitations from his varied acquintance in the city.

Margaret Slitheen, he read, had asked him to dinner.  

“Pass,” he growled.  She was just going to pump him for campaign donations.

Harriet Jones as well.  She wouldn’t ask him to donate, but he could only stand conversations about Cottage Hospitals for so long…

Jabe Cheem he hesitated over.  They’d gone on a date or two, but there hadn’t been any real spark there.  He deleted her request as well.

Donna’s he didn’t delete, not because he wanted to go to dinner with his cousin, but because he had a feeling that if he did, she’d know, and would call him immediately and berate him for doing so.

Reinette?  Deleted.  No question.  The same with Lynda.

Why, he wondered, were all these people female?  He was an odd-looking bloke, big-eared and big-nosed, and grumpy as hell.  What did girls see in him?

Sarah Jane… now there was one he lingered over.  It had been a long time since he’d seen her.  He felt like he was a different man now.  With a tinge of regret, he deleted that one as well.

All that was left was Jack’s original response (Thursday at 6 at their usual place), Donna, and his uncle Wilf.

Chris realized that he’d been looking for the entire time for one name that had never come up.  He remembered the last time he’d talked to her like it was yesterday, even though it had been almost four years.

_“Doctors Without Borders called… they want me immediately.”  
_

_“Now?  Really?  I… I thought we’d have more time…”  
_

_“You could… I dunno… come with me?”  
_

_She had been silent for a long time as his heart- his wasted, wretched heart- had stopped such that he feared it would never beat again._

_“Chris, love… I can’t leave my job on a moment’s notice… I can’t leave Mum or Mickey or… I can’t.  I’m sorry.”  
_

_His heart had beat again, but grudgingly, as though it would rather not._

_“Right… well… I’ll see you around then.”_

He’d left her in that moment.  Climbed out of her bed, put on his clothes, and walked out of her flat.  He’d expected she’d follow him, beg him to stay, promise she’d come with him.

“Arrogant sod,” he muttered, slapping shut his laptop.

She hadn’t come after him, and he’d never tried to contact her.  Not in three years.  She could have had a dozen boyfriends.  She could be married, have kids, be happy.

Just because he’d pined for her in all that time didn’t mean…

There was a knock on the door to his flat.

He went and looked through the peep-hole.  The face was turned down, all he could see was blonde hair, but even that stopped his broken heart one more time.

He opened the door to see her standing there just as he remembered.  Pink and yellow and breathtakingly beautiful.

“Rose,” he breathed.

She stood still for a moment, taking him in.  He wondered what she saw- his hair was short now, and he was a bit thinner.  He knew the lines around his eyes (she’d always been too young for him, round-cheeked, with innocent eyes) and across his forehead were deeper now.  He was more fit, his muscles harder, but he was harder as well.  Not the man whose heart had poured into her every time he’d kissed her.  Before.

“I waited for you, Chris,” she said, in lieu of hello.

And maybe he wasn’t as hard as he thought, because all the ice he’d thought was his lot melted with those words.

“You did?  Even though…”

“I’d have waited forever.  All of time and space.  And when you go this time, I’ll be with you.”


End file.
